Born into bondage in Union-leaning northwest Tennessee, Tennyson Bouguereau spends his days working the tobacco fields of a small farm, avoiding any action that might drive his pro-Confederate neighbors to the kind of unprovoked violence that killed his mother. But when, in the wake of emancipation, a gang of defeated rebels descends on the farm, his choice to defend it and the people within makes Tennyson a wanted man. Now he will not have the chance to till the 10 acres he and his sister, Rosalee, have been given as their own. Instead, he must leave the relative safety of the only home he’s known and venture into the newer world.

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family --- his beloved wife, June, and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one that Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in west Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive parents, John Cole and Thomas McNulty, whose story Sebastian Barry told in his acclaimed previous novel, DAYS WITHOUT END, she forges a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. Tennessee is a state still riven by the bitter legacy of the Civil War, and the fragile harmony of her family is soon threatened by a further traumatic event --- one that Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand.

Thomas McNulty, aged barely 17 and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars --- against the Sioux and the Yurok --- and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.

Told in the first person, as a narrative of Lilly Bere's life over 17 days, ON CANAAN'S SIDE opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson. Lilly revisits her past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland, at the end of the First World War, and continues her tale in America, a world filled with both hope and danger.